This blog is to encorporate discussions on Lost Continents, Catastrophism, The origin of Modern Humans and the Out of Africa theory, Genetics and Human Diversity, The Origin and Spread of Civilization and Cultural Diffusion across the face of the Globe.

Deluge of Atlantis

Deluge of Atlantis

Monday, March 21, 2011

Tlatilco Typology

Artificially Deformed Olmec Skull

The following is based on a situation well-known in Diffusionist literature and includes the matter of the "African (Black) Olmecs"

Olmec alternative origin speculations are explanations that have been suggested for the formation of Olmec civilization which contradict generally accepted scholarly consensus. These origin theories typically involve contact with Old World societies. Although these speculations have become somewhat well-known within popular culture, particularly the idea of an African connection to the Olmec, they are not considered credible by the vast majority of Mesoamerican researchers.

...........

Osteological evidence Some researchers have seen evidence for African skeletons at prehistoric sites in Mexico. Constance Irwin and Andrez Wiercinski have both reported that skeletal remains with African characteristics have been found in Mexico. Irwin, in Fair Gods and Stone Faces, says that there are "distinct signs of Negroid ancestry in many a New World skull."[citation needed] Wiercinski claims that some of the Olmecs were of African origin.[14] He supports this claim with cranial evidence from two Mesoamerican sites: Tlatilco and Cerro de las Mesas. Tlatilco is a site in the Valley of Mexico. Although outside the Olmec heartland, Olmec influences appear in the architectural record. The crania were from the Pre-Classic period, contemporary with the Olmec. Cerro de las Mesa is within the Olmec heartland, although according to Wiercinski, "the series . . . is dated on the Classic period."[15] The Classic period is generally defined to start around AD 250, or 600 years after the end of the Olmec culture.

To determine the racial heritage of the skeletons, Wiercinski used classic diagnostic traits, determined by craniometric and cranioscopic methods, as well as the Polish Comparative-Morphological School skeletal reference collection. These measurements were then compared against three crania sets from Poland, Mongolia and Uganda to represent three racial categories,[16][17][18] which allowed Wiercinski to sort each skull into one or more racial categories.

In his conclusion, Wiercinski presented his findings:[19]

Based on his comparisons, Wiercinski found that 14% of the skeletons from Tlatilco and 4.5% of the skeletons from Cerro de las Mesas had elements of "Black" racial composition.

In the last section of his paper, Wiercinski compared the physiognomy of the skeletons to corresponding examples of Olmec sculptures and bas-reliefs on the stelas. For example, Wiercinski states that the colossal Olmec heads represent the "Dongolan" type.[23] The empirical frequencies of the Dongolan type at Tlatilco calculated by Wiercinski was 0.231, more than twice as high as Wiercinski's theoretical figure of 0.101, for the presence of Dongolans at Tlatilco.

Wiercinski summarizes his research by offering the following "ethnogenetical hypotheses":[24]

The indigenous rootstock of Tlatilco and Cerro de las Mesas consists of "Ainoid, Arctic, and Pacific racial elements"."A next migratory wave" brought in additional Pacific as well as "Laponoid" elements."Some Chinese influence of Shang Period could penetrate Mesoamerica""A strange transatlantic, more or less sporadic migration" brought Armenoid, Equatorial, and Bushmenoid elements.Wiercinski's research methods and conclusions are not accepted by the vast majority of Mesoamerican scholars, in part because of his reliance on the Polish Comparative-Morphological methodology which limits the placement of skull types within a very narrow spectrum that is often within: Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Native Americans are thus made to fit within these groups which often yields false and contradictory assumptions as a result of sample bias.

An interdisciplinary analysis of Native American skulls has shown that there is no real evidence, apart from superficial misjudgments and erroneous conclusions, that Native Americans have any link to an African presence in America before the European encounter.[25]

15.^ Wiercinski (1972b).16.^ Keita (1993,1996); Keita, S.O.Y. (1993). Studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships, History in Africa, 20, 129-131; Keita,S.O.Y.& Kittles,R.A. (1997). The persistence of racial thinking and the myth of racial divergence, American Anthropologist, 99 (3), 534-544.17.^ Carlson,D. and Van Gerven,D.P. (1979). Diffussion, biological determinism and bioculdtural adaptation in the Nubian corridor,American Anthropologist, 81, 561-580.18.^ MacGaffey,W.(1970). Concepts of race in Northeast Africa. In J.D. Fage and R.A. Oliver, Papers in African Prehistory (pp.99-115), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.19.^ P. 156.20.^ "Laponoid" refers to those from Lapland, or in more general terms northern Europeans.21.^ Wiercinski states that the engraving of the bearded man on La Venta Stela 3 (see Olmecs as Nordics) is a "representative of Armenoid" (p. 163).22.^ "Ainoid" refers to the Ainu while Arctic refers to the general Siberian population.23.^ Wiercinski (1972b), p.16024.^ Wiercinski, p. 158 or p. 171.25.^ http://www.icb.ufmg.br/lbem/pdf/gonzalez2008ajpa-americapeopling.pdf

Now it just so happens that measuring and comparing human crania is what my degree is for, it's my "Thing". And I can tell you right off that Wiercinski and his whole classifactory system are both full of canal water, if not some pretty offensive raw sewage. Nevertheless, he may well be right in an identification class or two. For the most part, the "Races" he identifies are nothing of the sort, they are clusters of simlar phenotypes internally related to each other, identifiable through time, but nothing remotely analogous to the definition for "Race" or Subspecies (which is the exact equivalent to race in a Taxonomical sense) these groupings are too minor to represent geographically-defined varieties of the human species and that is in fact the fatal flaw of ALL such racist theories: they confuse morphologial variants with geographically-defined variants. Hence if you have Nordics, Alpines and Mediterraneans living in the same geographic region for thousands of years then they might be recognisable morphological subtypes but they are all the same race, Biologically speaking. In a sense it is still useful to be able to trace genetic heritage by bony anatomy, but that is a separate thing from the political meanings often attached to studies of the bony anatomy.

And for the most part, even the subtypes he defines are pretty meaningless. My own opinion is that such categories as "Armenoid-Bushmen" and "Laponid (Lapp)-Equatorial" are not only nonsensical, they are luducrous enough to be laughable.Following are some examples of early-Mexican skulls from before 10000 BC. The Tlacopoya cranium is first and it is obviously the same as the generalized-Asiatic Upper Paleolithic type of skull shown next. This type has been called "Eastern Cro-Magnon" and it is obviously what Wiercinzski s calling the "Ainuoid" Aboriginal type. That category would also include his "Ainu-Arctic" and "Subainuoid" types.

The highest percentage of skulls that Wiercinzski identifies are "Pacific" types (including "Pacific-Equatorial" and "Subpacific") That would mean like Polynesians, which is unusual because there were not supposed to be Polynesians out in the Pacific in Olmec times. Doubtless these would be the Indians of the post-Harappian interval, and more usually called Dravidian in type, possibly mixed with early Indonesians and/or Japanese. Along with them are some Middle-Eastern-type settlers called "Armenoid", "Anatolian" and "Alpine"which could quite easily be an absorbed Sumerian contingent included with the post-Harappians.

Tlatlico Originals from India

And, Having said all that, I am willing to grant him the Shang Chinese and the "Dongolian" Nubians, conditional to the fact that they must be confirmed independantly. The "Dongolian" presence also corresponding to the "Negroid" giant heads is also possibly still an important possibility.

1 comment:

And what about the objections which were levelled against Wierciniski in regards to my adaptation of the theory? In the first place, I do not subscribe to the notion of Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid major races but instead to a more flexible model of perhaps a dozen or so Geographical races in flux due to ongoing gene flow. hence the idea of races that never change over time is not in my vocabulary. And when we are talking about small party inclusions in the larger American majority, we are not talking the White Men Taking Over model of settlement: indeed, my notion is that the genetics of the Indian colonists were quickly bred out and became indistinguishable from the rest. Same thing goes for possible Nubians. I would hazard the guess (since I am assuming the post-Harappians to have come by way of Indonesia and/or Japan)that the Tlatilco colonists that finally made it to Mexico were already mixed, and at the time of the transpacific voyage they had become predominantly mtDNA group B-which is what their descendants presumably remained: since this is also the "Kon Tiki" lineage common to South America and Polynesia, I would count that as most likely.

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